Pediatric Tele-Critical Care: Initial Experience with a Continuous Surveillance Model Aiming to Prevent Cardiac Arrest in Children with Critical Heart Disease.

Despite advances in treatment of children with critical heart disease, cardiac arrest (CA) remains a common occurrence. We provided virtual support to bedside teams (BTs) from a tele-critical care (TCC) unit in a pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) and focused on early detection of concerning trends (CT) and avoidance of CA. Virtual surveillance workflows included a review of remote monitoring, video feed from patient room cameras, medical records, and artificial intelligence tools.

Innovation in Nurse Staffing Models: Implementing a Tele-Critical Care Nurse Program in a Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.

A pediatric tele-critical care nursing program provides an extra layer of surveillance for patients and alerts bedside nurses of abnormal trends to mitigate adverse events. Although workforce turnover combined with patient complexity and acuity in a pediatric cardiac intensive care unit strains the sustainability of a healthy work environment, these variables have also opened the door to an innovative approach to tele-critical care nursing care delivery. In addition to virtual surveillance, a clinical bedside intervention was developed to provide hands-on assistance to bedside nurses.